News linked to both this project and an event.
on May 29, 2026, Taylor Hornby discovered a critical counterfeiting vulnerability in Zcash's Orchard pool. Taylor Hornby reported the vulnerability to the Zcash Open Development Lab, and after coordinated efforts, a fix was completed on June 2. The vulnerability could have been exploited to secretly create an unlimited number of counterfeit ZEC within Zcash Orchard. Due to the privacy features of Orchard, it is cryptographically impossible to determine whether the vulnerability was exploited before the fix was deployed.The vulnerability had existed since Orchard's activation in May 2022 until an emergency fix was deployed on June 1, 2026. Taylor Hornby, with the assistance of AI tools, wrote a complete exploit program and generated an infinite, undetectable amount of counterfeit ZEC in a local test environment. Shielded Labs is currently collaborating with other Zcash developers to explore network upgrade proposals that would allow anyone to verify the integrity of Zcash's supply.
The Zcash Foundation released Zebra versions 4.5.3 and 5.0.0 to address a critical soundness vulnerability in the Orchard zero-knowledge proof circuit. Version 4.5.3 temporarily disables Orchard operations via an emergency soft fork, while version 5.0.0 activates NU 6.2, re-enables Orchard using the patched circuit, and permanently closes the vulnerability.
Odaily news: The Zcash Foundation has announced the release of Zebra 4.5.1 version update to fix a consensus-critical security vulnerability and strongly recommends that all node operators upgrade immediately. The vulnerability, identified as GHSA-2prc-cj5x-4443, involves a sigops (signature operation count) counting error in P2SH transactions, which could lead to potential consensus fork risks. This fix corrects an incomplete patch in the previously released 4.5.0 version, which was just released yesterday.The Zcash development team stated that the issue stems from discrepancies in sigop counting logic between different implementations, which could cause nodes to produce different results when verifying transactions, thereby affecting consensus consistency on the chain. The fix resolves this by reverting and adjusting the Rust implementation logic to ensure alignment with the expected protocol behavior.The Zcash Foundation emphasized that there is currently no workaround for this issue, and upgrading to 4.5.1 is the only method to ensure nodes remain on the correct chain and avoid potential fork risks.
: The Zcash Foundation has released version 4.5.0 of its node client, Zebra. This update includes multiple security fixes, addressing a critical consensus vulnerability and several high-severity Denial of Service (DoS) issues. All node operators are strongly urged to upgrade immediately.Key fixes in this release include a sigop counting error in P2SH script parsing (which could cause a consensus fork with zcashd), a logic flaw in NU5 block validation caching, a crash risk related to transparent address balance overflow, along with multiple crash and resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in RPC interfaces and mempool processing. The Foundation stated that some vulnerabilities could be exploited by malicious nodes, leading to node stalls, restart loops, or even permanent stoppage.Additionally, this version adds support for ZIP-213 (enabling shielded coinbase outputs to Sapling) and optimizes network performance and security boundaries. This includes limiting resource allocation during the pre-handshake phase, fixing risks related to multi-threaded queue abuse, and enhancing the misbehavior scoring mechanism.The Zcash Foundation stated that this update addresses over 80 security reports from the ZCG Vulnerability Disclosure Program (spanning April to May 2026), covering multiple layers including consensus security, memory management, RPC processing, and the P2P network attack surface. Officials emphasized that there is no alternative to this upgrade; upgrading is the only way to ensure nodes do not experience a chain split and remain secure.
the L1 blockchain TAC team stated they have confirmed a security incident on the cross-chain layer resulted in approximately $2.8 million in assets being transferred, involving assets such as USDT, BLUM, and tsTON.TAC stated that if the attacker returns the relevant funds to the designated multi-signature address, the team will consider this incident a "white hat rescue" and will not take legal action against the operator of the involved ETH/BSC, ZEC, and TON addresses.As a reward, the attacker can receive an approximately 10% bounty, equivalent to about 13 ETH and 300 ZEC.
The Zcash Foundation officially announced the release of Zebra 4.4.0, which addresses multiple critical consensus-level security vulnerabilities. All node operators are strongly advised to upgrade immediately. The vulnerabilities include a denial-of-service (DoS) flaw that could permanently halt the discovery of new blocks; a signature operation (sigop) counting error in block validation that may cause consensus divergence; abnormal handling of transparent transaction signature hashes; and a memory allocation amplification attack risk. The Zcash Foundation stated that some of these vulnerabilities could cause Zebra nodes to accept blocks rejected by zcashd, potentially triggering a chain fork. Without timely upgrades, nodes risk interruption of block discovery, consensus forks, and amplified resource consumption. No alternative mitigations are currently available.